{"id":203,"date":"2017-09-19T07:13:28","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T07:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/?p=203"},"modified":"2017-09-19T07:13:28","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T07:13:28","slug":"metronomes-on-my-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/uncategorized\/metronomes-on-my-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Metronomes on My Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

I super-duper love my metronome. My metronome is one of the oldest musical friends I have, at least in this leg of my musical journey. I have had it since 8th grade and I\u2019m pretty sure I prepared for one of my first All-state auditions with it. Its been with me since day one. Its also been paramount to my musical success as a percussionist and often its easy to forget the role that metronomes in general have taken as a part of my musical growth.
\nMy metronome and the most popular other metronomes on the market today are a part of a line of metronomes called Doctor Beat that are made by Boss.<\/a> Now the smallest member of this lineup is the DB-30 which is the cutest little clip on thing you\u2019ve ever seen and it was actually the metronome I had before I bought my current one. Then there\u2019s also the celebrity DB-90 which looks like this:<\/p>\n

DB-90 Metronome<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The DB-90 is best known for single-handedly keeping every single drumcorp or marching band in the country in time. The mere sound of it has been known to trigger traumatic episodes among former band members, causing them to relive the sights and sounds of getting screamed at by their psychotic band director whilst simultaneously getting roasted by the sun. Its clunky silver plastic casing weighs at least a couple of pounds and it quite literally eats 9 volt batteries. It comes with enough weird, useless grungy beat presets to run an underground Polish nightclub along with probably the most disturbing synthetic counting voice samples in existence that have never once helped anyone play in time better ever. And the worst part, at over $150 on most sites, the DB-90 is probably the stupidest piece of technology available. Yet in spite of the the supreme extra-ness of the DB-90, metronomes have come a long way through history to earn the prominence they enjoy in today\u2019s musical culture.<\/a>
\nThe history of metronomes is actually not all that fascinating. It pretty much starts out in the same place as clocks, where\u00a0Galileo<\/a> observed and the described the properties of a pendulum. As time and discoveries progressed pendulums were able to be made with adjustable weights which affected how fast the period of the swing was. In 1814, a man by the name of Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel<\/a> invented the metronome while studying pendulums. His design was the first truly successful metronome because it made sound and had a spring acting as as escapement that kept it ticking. Winkel was not successful at patenting his \u201cchronometer\u201d although, and in 1816 another fellow named Johann Maelzel<\/a> took Winkels design, slapped a scale on it designating certain bpm\u2019s, and called it his own.<\/p>\n

Maezel Metronome<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This type of metronome is the one we have all come to know and love as the \u201cclassic\u201d metronome. With the advent of mass-produced electrical appliances in the 20th century, metronomes like the Franz electric metronome began gaining ground. Nowadays most metronomes are digital, but Maelzel\u2019s classic style metronomes still appear and are even written for in pieces like Casey Cangelosi\u2019s \u201cSlight of And Evil Hand.\u201d Their effect on the way we write, perform and interpret our music today is immense.<\/p>\n